Cruelty to Dogs

To the Editors of the Crimson:

Although it is not clear from your recent (March 22) article on "Researchers Defend Use of Pounds' Dogs", a number of members of the Harvard Community do oppose the Massachusetts Pound Seizure Law, which is currently on the statute books, and which allows laboratories to requisition dogs from Public Pounds. It was Harvard researchers who, in 1956, were instrumental in the passage of the law, and today Harvard is by far the biggest user of pound dogs in the state, accounting for approximately 1600 in 1982.

The animals requisitioned by Harvard are used for at least two purposes--clinical demonstrations to first-year medical students ('Dog Lab') and in experimentation. Unfortunately both sets of activities cause animals to suffer. Yet no researcher using the requisitioned dogs has explained why the supposed benefits of using these dogs in clinical demonstrations or in experiments exceed the suffering caused.

The 'Dog Lab' uses about 30 dogs annually; the Physiology department expects first year medical students to participate in it, and provides no alternatives to witnessing the dissection and ultimate death of these dogs. Cases of vivisected dogs in the lab waking from anesthesia have been recorded; the surgical procedures can last several hours; these procedures are well explained in textbooks; and the end product is not healing, but rather death. How unfortunate that medical students' first brush with surgery counts life so cheaply.

Good doctors have been trained without dog labs. The lab is therefore not essential. Out of moral concern for ending suffering it should be abolished.

Many of the experiments using dogs aim to measure the effects of various drugs on high blood pressure. (Presumably such drugs are then to be applied to humans, a dubious step to say the least.) Using intrusive surgery, inflatable cuffs are placed near the heart, and these cuffs may be blown up to restrict blood flow and raise blood pressure. In some cases this causes heart attacks. The dogs live for weeks in cages. Yet one of the leading lights in this field, Dr. Clifford Barger, has suggested that the dogs actually enjoy the experimental sessions. Is it not more likely that the dogs enjoy the human contact, however horrid, which is denied them most of the day as they wait in their cages?

Members of the Harvard Committee for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an active and growing undergraduate group committed to improving the lot of animals at Harvard, urge that the Pound Seizure Law be repealed. If dogs are too easy and too cheap to get, they will be overused. It is high time to inject some more moral consideration into our relationships with other animals. Jonathan Haughton   Instructor in Economics